Speech Understanding in Primary Schoolchildren with Autism Spectrum Disorders and its Relationship with EEG Characteristics. Part II

The article presents the second part of the comprehensive study of speech understanding and comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We present results of evaluation of expressive speech at the level of phonology, lexicon, morphosyntax and discourse in primary schoolchildren with ASD. The study revealed correlations between the severity of autistic manifestations and non-verbal intelligence and the level of expressive speech. Comparison of the correlations in the subgroups of children with different levels of functioning revealed that children with greater expression of autistic manifestations and lower indices of non-verbal intelligence demonstrate decreased level of expressive speech. We revealed differences in EEG spectral characteristics between subgroups with ASD with different levels of functioning: in the subgroup with less pronounced disorders, a higher level of speech generation correlates with a lower index of β2-activity, in the group with more pronounced ones – with a lower index of slow-wave activity.